One can point to the movies that everybody hates - reviewers and moviegoers alike - as some kind of evidence that reviewers "influence" the audience, but there's no good correlation between the success of these big-budget summer blowouts and reviews at all.

If there were, Michael Bay would be taking my lunch order at Tastee Diner.

You know what movie has an RT rating lower than the one Man Of Steel has today? Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

BTW, the most successful film in history had a "Fresh" rating slightly lower than Star Trek Into Darkness.

There's no consistent correlation between reviews and box office performance, nor between critical opinion and the reaction of the moviegoing public. The Great Gastby has a 50% rating on RT (30% from top critics), but a 72% audience rating (and a 7.5 rating on IMDB), and it's had a pretty leggy run at the box office.

BTW, the most successful film in history had a "Fresh" rating slightly lower than Star Trek Into Darkness.

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By the measure of nominal dollars, Avatar is the winner, yes.

Box Office Mojo doesn't have a worldwide adjusted for inflation chart, only domestic. But it looks like Gone with the Wind would easily be the winner in adjusted sales, worldwide, since it wins the adjusted domestic hands down, and since it made about the same amount foreign as domestic.